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We cannot know another person if we do not know ourselves, which is essential for secure, meaningful, empathetic relationships with the capacity for intimacy and emotional growth. We need to figure out what makes us tick and what ticks us off, no matter the environment.
Self-understanding, especially of hidden hurts, helps us control overwhelming raw emotions. Calmness promotes compassion.
Psychoanalytic Attachment Theory stresses self-reflection as requisite for meaningful, empathetic human connection. Securely attached, nurtured children naturally develop empathy and compassion. Developing a compelling, coherent, replicable meta-narrative life story is vital to self-awareness and correlates with self-reflective capacity.
Many people have difficulty identifying and regulating emotions. They respond to provocation impulsively, without forethought. They are clueless about why they feel down, anxious, fearful, overwhelmed, exploited, or in the dark about the direction their life has taken.
Outwardly, they show a coping persona but are inwardly troubled and symptomatic — they know something is wrong but can’t figure out what it is. They may eventually ask themselves: “Why am I feeling/acting this way? Things are going well. I should be happy. I should be successful. I should enjoy my relationships. What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong might be an undisclosed family secret, emotional abandonment by a parent, or a lie that the family accepted and perpetuated. It often takes the form of a pattern — a series of experiences that revolve around a particular person or situation. The intense emotionality could be handed down willingly as abuse or unwittingly because that’s what humans do.
I’ve worked with many patients who fall between the cracks — people who are not afflicted by massive traumas like war and childhood sexual abuse, or aren’t dealing with severe illness. Yet they suffer until they know why they are who they are.
As we look inward and familiarize ourselves with the intense emotions we’re having trouble with, we can manage our feelings; they make sense in our lives and don’t hurt us. We are updating our story. We can stop externalizing painful emotions — stop finger-pointing — which often results in blaming and scapegoating others.
But even if we’re successfully managing our lives, what about the trauma of those closest to us? How do we update our parents’ and grandparents’ stories?
My parents were Holocaust survivors, and although the Holocaust had an embedded presence, I wasn’t running from persecution the way they had to. I was a loved child. I feel fortunate that observing and living with my parents’ respective trauma narratives afforded me that latitude to introspectate (a neologism of introspect and spectate) and logically expand my family’s stories.
Here’s a story that illustrates how we can address intense emotions that mystify and rattle us.
When I was growing up, my father refused to allow me and my brother to run up and down the stairs. He yelled that the vibrations from our feet might shatter his porcelain figurines — although his treasures, safely stored in a sturdy cabinet, were not endangered. At the time, it seemed a ridiculous, arbitrary rule.
Recently, while sharing stories, my sister reminded me that when the Nazis first occupied his town, Dad had claimed expertise at sorting and packing eggs to save himself. If an egg sorter broke a single egg, an officer shot him dead. This story reveals the importance of story-sharing, introspection, and self-reflection in mitigating the impact of generational trauma. Had he been able to explain the underpinnings of this peculiarity so that my siblings and I could understand, or had I empathetically understood the symbolism that our life seemed as fragile as a porcelain figurine or an egg for my father, we all would have had a rational understanding — and could have relaxed.
With empathy and understanding for ourselves, loved ones, and other humans, traumatized or not, we can appreciate them and their narratives. We don’t need to damage, alter, or act upon those. We can opt not to absorb terror and turmoil by osmosis. Imposing and perpetuating fear of unnamed secrets, superstitions, bizarre habits, and unspeakable horrors can have a multi-generational ripple effect. Still, with awareness, we can stop dysfunctional and traumatic cycles.
Connecting the dots allows us to have compassion, empathy, and growth. It’s no surprise that I’m a worrywart and that Humpy-Dumpty still gives me the creeps. I can live with that.
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